Robert Kleyn has established himself as a vanguard architect, designer and teacher; but his work as a visual artist, most widely seen in Europe, is less well known in Canada. The exhibition Inside Out/Outside In: Working with Robert Kleyn will focus on an innovative card catalogue art project that Kleyn spent thirteen years creating.
During the period 1972—1985, while moving between Rome, New York City and Vancouver, Kleyn maintained an extensive file card index concerning both ideas for new work and reflections on works in progress. The cards outlined ideas to be transformed into objects and actions, all in keeping with early Conceptual Art, and involved architectural interventions, film, video, slide projections, and performance-related experiments. Since few of these projects have been previously realized or exhibited, this curatorial project and exhibition will be simultaneously an exercise in archival research and revivification. It is the intention of the curators that Inside Out/Outside In will enable the realization of some of Kleyn’s projects as outlined in the index cards, presenting them, as closely as possible, in the spirit of the time in which they were originally conceived.
Inside Out/Outside In: Working with Robert Kleyn is part of an exhibition series initiated by the Collective for Advanced and Unified Studies in the Visual Arts (CAUSA). These exhibitions serve to re-examine avant-garde practices of Canadian Artists from the 1940s to the 1970s.
